by Lauren Krupar
Associate Editor
Hudson -- When students at Evamere Elementary School search the school library's online catalogue or learn about motion by building virtual roller coasters, they are using a computer lab that represents the district's pledge to the community.
The new computer lab was funded by a permanent improvement levy voters approved in May 2007. Other benefactors of the levy money are scattered through the district -- a new computer lab at McDowell Elementary School, portable wireless hubs at East Woods and new computers at the high school.
"The community was so gracious," District Communications Manager Sheryl Sheatzley said, adding approximately $285,000 of the $1.3 million annually raised by the 1.5-mill, five-year permanent improvement levy is for technology, as designated by the Board of Education when proposing the levy last year.
While the district only began collecting levy funds in January, Hudson teachers and students already have benefited from the levy.
When Evamere first-grade teacher Charlotte O'Hara and her students created and presented a research paper earlier this year, they used online tools, learned how to use word processing programs and helped each other use the new technology.
More importantly, O'Hara said, they used the computer lab together as a class, instead of four or five students using single computers.
"They can learn together," she said. "You can have the whole class working on a project instead of four on the computers. That just wasn't working out."
Marsha Curry, media specialist at Evamere, said the new lab -- which contains 24 student computers and one teacher computer -- also helps teachers expand their students' computer literacy.
"We show them how to research things, how to find things online, by using pre-selecting sites that they can read," Curry said. "I was amazed at how Web-savvy they are. I thought I could teach them how to scroll, but they already knew."
Curry uses the lab to teach students how to look up items in the school's library and how to research material online. Teachers have used the more than a month-old facility to teach directions with mapping program for a virtual, interactive sandbox, to show how objects move by building virtual roller coasters and more.
"It hasn't been open very long, but we're loving it," O'Hara said. "It's so wonderful what we can do."
Evamere is one example of how teachers are using technology in the classroom. New computers were installed in the high school media center and computer science classroom while wireless cards created a portable wireless hubs at East Woods.
Additional computers also were installed at the middle school have been reserved for the art and technology classes, and laptops have been ordered for the middle school's science program.
Next year, the district's special education program is slated to receive new, specialized computers, Sheatzley said. The district also plans to replace mobile wireless computer labs district-wide and add a computer lab or wireless lab to Ellsworth Hill.
E-mail: lkrupar@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3146